Posted on October 8, 2020
Servers
Having a website is vital for your business’ success. While the majority of American businesses do have a website, many of these will not be hosted on dedicated servers. This means that they aren’t as great as they could be.
A dedicated server puts you in full control of your web hosting. The benefits of this for your business are huge.
So what is a dedicated server and how can it help you? In this guide, we’ll take a closer look at the most burning questions people have about dedicated servers and their business.
Ready to get started? Then read on!
A server is a machine that hosts your website and serves content to its visitors. The server holds everything that your website needs to function including scripts, style sheets, images, and more.
The visitor’s browser will request a webpage and your server will, well, serve them with it.
A dedicated server is a server that is only used by your business. No one else will be on the server, which means you get all the power, storage, and bandwidth that’s available.
You may not be aware that if you’re using low-cost hosting, you’re almost certainly not the only person on that server. You will usually be on shared hosting, which means that other businesses are on the same server. They will be taking up storage space, computing power, and bandwidth that could be yours.
Now you understand what a dedicated server is, it’s time to look at why you need one. Read on and discover how one could help you and your business!
If you’re on shared hosting, every person who is on the server with you is using up bandwidth and computing power that could be yours. What does this mean for you? It means a slower website.
A slower website is bad for you and your business. It makes visiting your website more frustrating for visitors, which has several knock-on effects.
For one, a user may leave your site and go to a competitor’s, which is lost business for you. Yet this isn’t the only problem with visitors leaving your site. If a visitor leaves your site without going to any other pages, your bounce rate increases.
If your bounce rate is too high, Google will start ranking you lower in search results. If you’re not ranking well, you’re going to get fewer visitors and less chance of new customers finding your business.
When you own a business, security must be a priority. Yet few people realize that shared hosting can put your security at risk.
Shared hosting usually has a central shared directory that is used by every site on the server. Your site is linked to all the others on the server. This means that if a hacker accesses one, they can access the others.
Being on the same server as other sites also means that you’re at extra risk of denial of service attacks. If one site on the server is attacked and brought down, yours will be too.
Google could also end up penalizing your site, if you’re on the same server as a spam site or one that distributes malware, you’ll get in trouble with the search engine too.
When you’re on shared hosting, you have precious little control over what services you use. When you have a dedicated server, you decide exactly how you want your website to be.
You can configure the CMS of your site how you want, you can choose the plugins and extensions that you run, and you can opt to include or exclude certain extra services that the hosting company offers.
All of this means that your dedicated server can scale to your business’ needs. It can be as complex as it needs to be and as large as it needs to be. You are in full control of your server and can make it exactly what it needs to be.
Some companies choose to run their own servers. While this can work for large businesses with server experts, for small and medium-sized businesses, this is not usually a possibility.
If your IT budget is tight, purchasing the necessary equipment can also be expensive. If you use dedicated hosting, you don’t need to pay this hefty initial investment and you don’t need to maintain the equipment.
Instead, you can sit back and relax knowing that your site is getting the best possible performance without costing the earth. You get all of the benefits, with much less of the expense.
If you’re on a shared server, you’re not going to be able to have as much traffic as you may like. Too much traffic could bring your site down or slow it down for other users.
While this is still possible, the scalability and better bandwidth of dedicated servers mean it’s far less likely. You’ll be able to have more simultaneous visitors to your website without sacrificing their user experience.
This means a lower bounce rate and less lost business.
When we began this article, you wanted to know “what is a dedicated server?”
By now, you should see why having a dedicated server for your business could help you a great deal. If you’d like to learn more about how we could help you, take a look around our site and learn more!
For any questions about our services or pricing, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.